


A conversation, a walk home, the way you look when you smile

by Teatrolley



Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, POV Jonas Noah Vasquez, Post-Canon, Religion, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-07
Updated: 2018-02-07
Packaged: 2019-03-15 02:05:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,193
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13603284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teatrolley/pseuds/Teatrolley
Summary: They meet in the summer of 2017, after Even starts hanging out with his Bakka friends againOr: When he first meets Mikael, Jonas does not expect to start liking him. Sometimes, though, unexpected things turn out to be great





	A conversation, a walk home, the way you look when you smile

**Author's Note:**

> i tried to post this yesterday with a different title but ao3 locked it down as spam so here's to hoping i've managed to throw them off the track enough that it'll work now lol
> 
> this happened very much on a whim. apparently i was in a jonas mood. i don't really know either but i hope that you enjoy

They meet in the summer of 2017, after Even starts hanging out with his Bakka friends again.

There’s a version of a story in there that’s obviously just a version and not the whole of it, although it has more details when it comes from Even’s mouth than it does when it comes from Isak’s. That might, however, have more to do with the fact that Isak’s continued response, whenever anyone asks, is _they were friends once, and they’re friends now, and the rest you’ll have to get from him_ than with anything else.

There’s enough, though, in that story of theirs, for Jonas to tell that Mikael, at least, is not the villain in all of this, despite what Isak’s knuckles had to say, once; that maybe, in fact, Mikael is closer to being the one who watched than being the one who drove the plot. 

So when he’s there, again, at Eva’s birthday, along with the rest of them, Jonas shakes his hand and says nothing about Isak’s previously bloody nose. Instead, he gives him a smile.

*

In early July the boys all go on a trip to Morocco.

He’s single, still, because he tried with Eva, for a few weeks after the Eid party, but it turned out to maybe not be the right time. 

He’s interested in getting serious, he realised; interested in finding companionship. Eva, however, was less so, and it’s not that he can really blame her for that, because she has her reasons and she’s allowed to, but he knew, pretty quickly, that it couldn’t work out. At least not without kind of breaking his heart.

It’s difficult to decide if seeing Isak and Even be in love with each makes him regret that decision, or be confirmed in it.

Either way, they are in love, and they spend the whole trip being so.

When they go to museums, like the cultured people that Mahdi and Even apparently are, Isak whines to him for a good fifteen minutes, but ends up following Even around anyway, whispering quietly about the sculptures they’re viewing and offering sips from his water-bottle to him; when they try out new snacks they share them with each other, and when Isak doesn’t like them he hands them to Even who, for some goddamn reason, always takes them and becomes the one who throws them out; when they’re on the plane home Isak rests on Even’s shoulder, and Even rests on Isak’s head, and then they read the same book before they fall asleep.

It’s companionship, and it makes Jonas a little bit jealous. Not of them, just of what they have.

In September Even starts uni, and Mikael does, too, and it’s after that that it really takes off.

The first time they’re really alone together, it's a Wednesday evening in late September, where Jonas asks Isak what he’s doing, and Isak asks him over for dinner. _Little caveat: Mikael is already here, too._

The thing about Even is that he’s a loud person. Him and Isak together are a bit loud too, but only on occasion, and according to Isak him and Mikael are loud, but the three of them together: that’s something entirely different.

When Jonas opens their front door, spare key, there’s already a lot going on.

“So, several things are happening,” Isak tells him, holding onto his shoulder in the kitchen doorway, while commotion happens behind him. “One, Even thought we should cook steak with wine, but it went wrong and we drank it instead and two, he’s now in love with Cardi B so three, you can tell where this is going, can’t you?”

It’s going to the three of them laughing together, all a little tipsy, as they joke about this new rap music and try to sing along, and Jonas is happy that he’s happy, that’s true. It’s just also true that there’s a sort of symbolism to it: the three of them, banded together in a circle that Jonas can’t enter with them, because they’re already too close-knit.

It’s been like that for a while now.

Isak tries, actually. Always tries; does all he can to bring Jonas in to the conversation, to include him and to make him feel included, because he sees fucking everything now; because now that he has the energy to, he’s the kindest, most observant person Jonas has ever met. 

Actually, sometimes Jonas feels a bit put to shame.

To be fair he did observe Isak, at least most of the time. But maybe he didn’t observe Eva as well, and he definitely didn’t notice that Elias was shitty, and he also never thought to ask about Magnus's home-life, before he offered it up on his own.

He just wishes he’d been better at it, that’s all. He just wishes to be better at it, now.

“Jonas, right?” Mikael asks, and Jonas doesn’t have to ask for his name, because he remembers from before, but he still does. “Good to see you again, man.”

Mikael shakes his hand while he says it, warm where Jonas’s is cold from the outdoors, because he’s been here a while, but there’s something in his tone that makes Jonas forget all about that: sincerity. It genuinely sounds like he means it. So:

“Yeah,” Jonas says, a little surprised. “Uh, hi. It’s good to see you, too.”

*

“I like your hair,” Mikael says later, as they make their way to the tram together, after Even and Isak threw them out of their flat. “It’s unique. I like it.”

“You like it because it’s unique?” Jonas asks.

“Yeah, I like unique things. My favourite thing that I own is a blue ceramic turtle that my sister got me once.”

It’s a weird thing to say to a person you barely know, or maybe that’s just what Jonas thinks. He’s unused to this, too, he realises: people you don’t have to pry things out of. Who are open already, and welcoming you in. For the first time in a while he considers what to say for a while before he says it. Then:

“Okay. But why a turtle?”

Mikael grins, like it was the right question. Then shrugs.

“Don’t know,” he says, and shrugs again, like it’s spontaneous more than a calculated action. “I think it was something to do with the resilience of new-born things.”

“Oh?” Jonas says, and when Mikael nods at him with a wide grin, he feels something inside of him shifts.

*

Like a switch has been flipped, he starts seeing Mikael around all of the time.

He’s at KB when the boys all swing around there, on their ways home to pick Even up from his shift; he’s at Isak and Even’s flat, more and more and more, and at the parties that the girls host, too, and in the end he’s on Jonas’s laptop as well, in the form of a friend request. 

Jonas hasn’t smiled like this at something like that before, but he smiles now.

Half an hour or so after he's accepted the request, Mikael sends him a screenshot of a photo of Isak and him, taken back in first, and a message, too: 

“How much do I have to pay you to let me cyberbully Isak with this?”

It makes Jonas snort out loud at his phone, loud enough that Thea jumps from the other end of the couch and glances up from her own phone to send him an annoyed look.

“What?” he asks, and she rolls her eyes.

“I hate it when you like someone,” she says, returning to her own phone, and Jonas's heart skips a little beat. “You become so embarrassing.”

"Right." 

Graciously, really, Jonas doesn't go on but ignores her, before he settles into the couch a little further and goes back to his phone. He smiles the second time he reads the message, too.

“You stalking me?” he asks, and watches as the dancing bubbles of Mikael replying appear almost immediately. Then:

“What else would I be doing with our fresh, new-born Facebook friendship?” the message says, and Jonas snorts to himself again as the next message rolls in: “Or my time, for that matter?”

“You’re right,” he writes back, fully aware that he’s thinking way too much about how to phrase his messages to come off right. Well. To come off charming and cool. “Actually you’re so right that I’ll let you cyberbully him for free.”

Once again the bubbles appear, and half of Jonas’s continued smile, he thinks, is probably due to that. When the next message appears, the smile grows even wider.

“Knew it was a good decision to friend you,” it says, and the warmth it spreads through Jonas’s abdomen is entirely embarrassing and entirely frightening and entirely new.

“You’re doing it again,” Thea says, but even that and his subsequent flipping her off doesn’t manage to pierce his good mood.

He doesn’t know yet if that’s a good thing.

*

“Thanks a lot,” Isak says the next day, when Jonas slides into a chair at the cafeteria table where he and Mahdi are sitting, before he slides his phone over, messages open on the screen, so Jonas can read the ones that Mikael has sent him.

On top is the picture and then, underneath it, a message, _Jonas didn’t even want money for this,_ and another, _I hope you enjoy Even teasing you about this until you both die at like 90 at the exact same second._

Jonas smiles, because he’s funny in these messages, too.

“I got shit all night for this.”

“He really has talked a lot about it,” Mahdi says, and laughs when Isak turns that grumpy look to him. “You have.”

“Shut up.”

“About what?” Magnus asks, coming swooping in to steal the phone from the table before any of them can stop him, grinning around the granola bar he’s eating as he reads the message. “Funny.”

“Isak got shit from Even all night,” Mahdi says.

“Oh, right.” Magnus slides into a chair around the table, too. “And I’m sure _that_ was absolutely terrible.”

“You’re annoying,” Isak says.

“Anyway.” Magnus ignores Isak’s frustration at him, and eats another bite of his granola bar. “Since when are Mikael and J on a team together? I thought we didn’t like him?”

“We do like Mikael.” It's Isak who says it. “Keep up.”

“No, I know," Magnus says. "I meant Jonas.”

"Haha." 

Jonas lifts a hand to flip him off, but smiles when the rest of them laugh.

“No,” Magnus goes on, eating still. “I just didn’t know you guys were friends, is all. It must be new?”

Jonas shrugs, because he doesn’t know how else to explain it. _We’re not friends_ , he could say, _he just friended me on Facebook_ , but he thinks it would feel sort of disingenuous. A bit too close to lying for him to feel comfortable with it.

“Sure,” he says, instead, leaning back in his chair to find a more relaxed position. “Let’s go with that.”

Across the table, Isak’s eyes narrow just a little, but he doesn’t say anything. He notices, though. Jonas is absolutely sure that he notices.

*

It’s not long after when Isak asks him over in the evening, to hang out.

He’s not really acting suspicious, so Jonas isn’t sure how he knows to be suspicious, but he does, and when he arrives at the flat he’s right, too. In the hallway Isak greets him and pulls him in by the shoulder, leaning in close so they can speak quietly, and then:

“Mikael is here.”

Of course. Of course that’s exactly where he is.

When he rolls his eyes, Isak just grins.

Not a lot happens throughout the night, other than the fact that they play FIFA, and that Mikael wins the round the two of them play, and that Jonas feels Isak’s eyes boring into him when he laughs at Mikael’s ungraceful display of victory joy.

Not a lot happens other than the fact that when it’s time to go home again, Mikael suggests they do it together.

“Nice night, eh?” he says, once they’re outside in the cold in their jackets and beanies, where their breaths turn to smoke in the air when they speak. “Fun.”

“You’re just saying that because you won.”

“Well,” Mikael says. “If I’m not going to be happy for me, then who is?”

 _Me?_ Jonas thinks, and absolutely doesn’t say.

“You’re right,” he says, instead, making Mikael smile once again. “Anyway, did you hear that Isak got teased for the picture? For ages, apparently.”

“I _know_.” Mikael says it with such excitement, and it’s contagious, just like most things about him seem to be. "It worked." And then: “Sometimes it’s annoying how in love they are.”

Jonas laughs because it’s true, and it’s good to see Isak in a place so happy it’s possible to take the mick out of him like this. Mikael, however, frowns a little before he speaks again:

“Actually it’s not.” Jonas raises his brows in question at him, and Mikael goes on: “You know how sometimes you say something and then your brain comes up with all of the counter-points and you realise how you sort of disagree with yourself?”

“Uh,” Jonas says, because he doesn’t, actually, at least not really. “No?” And then, hoping to be funny: “Usually I’m thinking I have all the right answers.”

Like Jonas hoped he would, Mikael laughs.

“Maybe you do,” he says, and Jonas doesn’t know why it always gives him a confidence boost like this when Mikael teases him or plays along. “Although perspectives are nice too, right?”

“Yeah,” Jonas says, and thinks about Eva, _your opinion started meaning more than my own_ , and how maybe there’s a difference between being confident in your opinion and thinking that you’re always saying the right things, and that maybe he’s still figuring that one out. “I’m actually trying to become a better listener.”

It takes Jonas a moment before he realises that he’s no longer walking besides Mikael, but ahead of him, and when he glances back he sees that it’s because Mikael stopped walking entirely.

“What?”

“No,” Mikael says, coming up to his side again. “It’s just the first time I’ve heard anyone our age saying something like that.”

“Weird?” Jonas asks, but Mikael shakes his head.

“No,” he says. “Interesting.”

When they smile at each other, under the yellow lamppost lights, Jonas feels the same sort of warm swoop go through his stomach that he felt once looking at Eva, too.

So this is about the time he would freak out, if that was what he was going to be doing. _But a boy?_ he could say, or _but someone Not Eva?_ and it would all be fair, really, because they’re fair concerns. And yet:

It just doesn’t feel like that big of a deal. 

He’s a chill guy, he takes life as it comes, and Isak is out and Even is out and Eva is out, and it won’t make that big of a difference if he comes out, too. It probably won’t even make one if he doesn’t, either, if he remains label-less and says _all I’m doing is letting things happen as they will, and taking the rest of it from there._

If he’s going to feel warm in his chest for Mikael for a while, then it’s not like that will do any harm. So what? It’s thrilling, anyway, and he kind of likes it. So:

“Well,” he says, while they’re both still looking into each other’s eyes. “I’m an interesting guy.”

“Yeah," Mikael says. "It would seem so, wouldn’t it?” 

With another little gaze, then, he turns and keeps walking. 

_He really is Even’s friend_ , Jonas thinks, watching him retreating down the street as he’s reminded of Even’s faux-cool retreating and Isak’s staring and subsequent following.

A moment later, he follows, too.

*

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
yo wants-to-be-a-better-listener

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
do you always think you’re funny?

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
yes  
but actually i think it’s cool. i like people who are capable of change

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
do you always say exactly what you’re thinking, too?

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
so i’ve been told  
i had a nice time tonight  
maybe at some point we could hang out together just the two us?

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
i could teach you how to skate?

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
who says i don’t know already?

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
do you?

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
no

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
thursday?

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
thursday  
it’s a deal, skater-boy

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
deal

*

Not long after he does take Mikael to the skate-park, where he tries to teach him how to skate.

It doesn’t go well. It doesn’t necessarily go badly, either, but Mikael is too clumsy to even stay on the board for long, although he is it endearingly so. They try though, and keep trying, and in the end Mikael manages to go down one of the smallest ramps and they call it a day.

“You’re a good teacher, though,” Mikael says, as they pack up, as though to comfort him, which Jonas thinks is quite wonderful seeing as Mikael, if anyone, should be the one in need of comforting now.

He likes that, actually. How unashamed Mikael is, how confident and how unapologetically himself.

“I am?” he asks, instead of saying that. 

“Yeah,” Mikael confirms. “You’re patient. And you’re kind.”

Jonas smiles. It’s nice, this: to be seen with the generosity that Mikael seems to see everyone with. It’s nice, and Mikael is nice, and he can admit that to himself now.

After they’ve packed up Jonas suggests that they go for food, kebab, maybe, _you could show me a halal place?_ and Mikael does; takes him to this tiny place not all that far from the park where he talks to the owner and cook in a language that Jonas doesn’t understand.

“So, what’s the thing with movies?” he asks, once they’re sitting on a bench outside, eating. “Like where does the passion come from?”

Mikael shrugs, but not like he doesn’t know, just like he’s thinking, and then:

“Stories,” he says. “They have power, right? There are the stories that can reflect back to us, and tell us we’re not alone.” Jonas nods. “And then there are the stories that we tell about ourselves.”

Jonas remembers hearing something like that from Even once, when they talked about this, so he says that:

“That’s what Even says.”

Mikael snorts.

“Yeah,” he says. “Who’d have known being bipolar and being Muslim makes you feel equally helpless to control your own narrative?”

“Is that why?”

Once again Mikael shrugs, and this time Jonas thinks it might mean that he’s done talking about it, but he’s fascinated by this; fascinated by Mikael. Could imagine wanting to get to know Mikael more and for ages to come, because it seems like there’ll always be something new to explore.

“Anyway,” Mikael says, now. “He’s going to go far, I really think that. I mean, some of the ideas he had at Bakka were just dumb as fuck, but the quick connections he can make are incredible.”

Jonas snorts, and he so likes how Mikael always says what he’s thinking, exactly what he’s thinking, but in a kind way.

“That’s so nice,” he says.

“What?”

“You believe in him.”

“Oh,” Mikael says, smiling now, too. “Fiercely.”

Again, Jonas grins. And he believes it. Before he even got to know Mikael, he heard of him, and it’s been quickly clear that he cares like this: Like Isak, in a way, with a determination and an absolute persistence to not back down. And it shouldn’t be able to co-exist with the gentleness. But somehow, anyway, it does.

“You’re a good friend,” he says, and what it really means is that, _I like so much that you’re a good friend. That that’s something you value, because it’s something I value, too._ He's always valued it, and he's always tried, and it's not like it's difficult, but for Mikael it just seems easy. Like he's filled to the brim with love and caring, and always ready to share it, too.

“Thanks,” Mikael says, still, and maybe it is easy for him, but Jonas thinks there's a sincerity to his tone, like maybe what Jonas said mattered to him. 

The thought of it makes him smile.

That night, then, a while after they’ve parted again, he gets a new text from Mikael: 

“Goodnight skater-boy,” and then, underneath it, a heart, too.

He keeps smiling. He doesn’t really stop.

*

“Did it ever get resolved?” he asks Isak, later, because it’s one thing to be feeling things, and it’s another thing entirely to gear up to maybe do something about them. “That thing about the Quran and the homophobic things?”

He thinks it’s a casual question, but Isak gets this look on his face that reminds Jonas how old he used to seem. How weary and exhausted, because of the weight he was forced to wear on his shoulders and the care he was forced to take of his mother.

“I don’t know if that ever gets resolved,” he says. “Yousef lost his religion because of it. You know I used to go to church, too, with Mamma sometimes, and I’m not sure I’d feel welcome back there, either. But some people would.”

He shrugs.

“I guess it’s a person-to-person thing.”

So:

“I hope this isn’t terribly islamophobic,” he says to Mikael later, once they’re hanging out on some playground swings in the evening, passing a blunt back and forth between them.

“Never a good start,” Mikael says, and Jonas snorts.

“No, I know. But is the smoking thing really okay?”

Mikael shrugs.

“It is haram,” he says. “But you pick and choose, sometimes. Mutta eats pork.”

“Really?”

“Mm-hm. To me,” Mikael says, then. “The important part is the core of it, you know? The values and the community the stories. And Allah.”

“Okay.”

“But–” Mikael continues on his own, then stops, shrugs again, keeps going: “There are still some things I have a bit of a hard time with, you know? Like if I went to the Mosque and told them that–” He pauses, glances at Jonas, glances away. “I’m gay.”

Jonas has to bite his lip not to smile, because it feels inappropriate right now, but he nods instead, to show that he heard, and then Mikael does smile. Mikael, who likes boys, too.

“So, anyway,” he goes on. “If I told them that, they might not all like it. And I mean, that could happen anywhere, I just wish the Quran wasn’t– That it didn’t say those things, you know?” Again, he shrugs. “I don’t know.”

When their eyes meet Jonas shrugs, too, to show him that it’s okay if he doesn’t feel like elaborating anymore, that everything is okay. _You’re okay, I like you, you’re okay._

“Do you have anything to say to that?” Mikael asks.

“Which part?" Jonas says. "If it’s that you’re gay, then cool. And if it’s everything else, then I probably can’t add anything useful to it.”

“Is that the first time you’ve said that?" Mikael asks. " _I can’t add anything useful to that?_ ”

“Might be.”

They both grin, and Mikael shakes his head, too

“You’re so great,” he says, under his breath, like maybe Jonas wasn’t even meant to hear it, and then: “Jonas?” 

“Yes?”

“I haven’t kissed anyone before.”

Jonas’s heart skips a beat.

You don’t bring up something like that with a friend, you just don’t, not like this, and Jonas forgot what it was like to feel _nervous_ like this, heart beating a little too fast and electricity burning through all of your veins.

It’s happening. It might actually be fucking happening.

“Okay,” he says, and hears himself how it comes out a little breathless.

“I mean I’ve _been_ kissed, you know the story, but– Jonas?”

“Yes?”

Mikael gets off his own swing, and Jonas’s heartbeat quickens. 

The second later Mikael is standing in front of him, hands wrapped around the swing right above Jonas’s, and Jonas is tipping his chin upwards.

“Yes?” Mikael asks, and it’s a completely different question now. Jonas shifts his hands so they’re wrapped around Mikael’s instead of around the cold metal.

“Yes.”

Mikael kisses him.

Holy shit, Mikael is kissing him.

Jonas kisses him back, and then they’re kissing each other, and it’s gentle, just like Mikael is, and Jonas is leaning up to chase it, and then Mikael pulls away, and–

“Do it again,” Jonas says, and Mikael laughs, and then Jonas laughs, too.

“Again?”

Jonas nods.

“Again. Please.”

He does it again.

*

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
i can’t sleep

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
i can't sleep either

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
that's embarrassing for you

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
shut up  
can i see you tomorrow?

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
come to campus?  
meet me in the library?

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
deal  
will there be kissing?

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
if you can make a convincing enough case

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
you’d get to kiss me

 **Mikael Øverlie Boukhal**  
i’m convinced  <3  
night skater-boy  
see you tomorrow

 **Jonas Noah Vasquez**  
night  <3

*

Fifteen or so hours later he finds himself in-between the UiO library bookcases, thigh pressed in-between both of Mikael’s, as he’s nudging Mikael up against on of them while they’re making out.

It’s been a while since he’s been this happy.

“Come to my place,” he says, in-between kisses, while Mikael has a hand in his hair and another fisted in his shirt, using it to pull him in.

“I still have a lecture left,” he says.

“Fuck the lecture. Come to my place?”

“We’re not having sex.”

Laughing, Jonas lifts his hands off Mikael's waist and holds them up, next to his own head, like you'd do if you were surrendering.

“Okay,” he says. “Come to my place?”

“I promised Even I’d attend today."

“Did you actually?”

Mikael pulls away to nod, but then: 

“I’ll text him that something came up.”

Jonas grins.

“And come to my place?” he asks, again.

“And come to your place.”

At his place, then, they make it past Thea, who’s also home, and past Thea's questions, before they make it into his room, too, and into his bed where they make out once more.

Mikael intertwines their fingers and rolls over so he's lying on top of him, and it’s been so fucking long since Jonas spent this long just kissing someone; kissing and kissing and kissing, cheeks pink and breaths heavy and lips swollen and hair a mess. 

He’s into it, though. He’s so, so into it.

They kiss until an alarm on Mikael’s phone goes off, and tells them that it’s time for him to pray. So after helping him find a rug that will do as a makeshift prayer mat, Jonas leaves him for a moment to go stand in the hallway outside, touching his bottom lip with his thumb while he smiles.

A moment later Thea exits her room with an arm full of glasses that she brings with her as she moves towards the kitchen before she catches sigh of him and stops in her tracks, narrowing her eyes a bit.

“Are you gay?” she asks.

“Go away.”

“It really is contagious, huh?” He sends her a look, but she is undeterred. “What are you standing out here for, anyway? Did he bang you and leave?”

“He’s praying.”

“Wow.” She raises her brows. “I did not see any of that coming. I’m almost impressed.”

“Go away, now,” he repeats, but, well: he didn’t really see any of this coming either, and yet, and yet, and yet:

And yet, he thinks, it’s so fucking great.

*

A week or so later, it’s his turn, for once, to ask Isak out for kebabs.

Isak grins the moment he does, and doesn’t really stop grinning the entire way to the kebab place, which is annoying because it’s annoying how transparent Jonas apparently is, but which is also kind of sweet.

“You know,” Jonas asks, once they’re sitting down on a bench to eat and Isak is looking like he might be about to burst out of his skin but also, graciously, pretending like that’s not the case, “how when you came out to me, you told me you liked someone?”

Isak raises his brows.

“You mean, do I remember one of the most terrifying moment of my life? Yes.”

“Was it really?” Jonas asks, momentarily distracted.

“Jonas,” Isak says, looks at him, and then: “I can't believe I'm actually saying this out loud, but you’re my best friend and it was a rough time and you were sort of… the only permanent thing I had in my life. Of course I was scared.”

Jonas is very used to worrying about Isak, and to caring about Isak in this steady sort of way, but he’s much less used to this, the rush of it; of love, and of happiness that he’s happy, and of gratefulness, so:

“I like Mikael," he says. "I mean, romantically, I like Mikael. _Really_ like him.”

Isak just keeps chewing, and then:

“Okay.”

“Okay?” Jonas asks, feeling a little frenzied and a little relieved and only now realising just how stressful it must have been for Isak to come out to him, with much less reassurance that everything would be fine than Jonas has right now. “That’s all?”

“Well.” Isak shrugs. “Good looking guy though.”

Jonas laughs. Of course he laughs, because it’s funny, and because there’s so much relief in it, and because this whole thing with Mikael is bringing him and Isak closer, too.

“Does Even know? Should I tell Even?”

“Mikael is telling him,” Jonas says, because he is. They talked about it, and decided to do it at the same time. “Today.”

Isak raises his brows, like he's impressed.

“Wow,” he says. “You two are just straight to the point, huh? No mess. No crisis.” Jonas snorts. “Can the rest of us borrow some of that focus or what?”

“You just need to verbalise what you want, that’s all.”

“Oh, never mind then, I’ll never do that.”

They both laugh, and after they’ve laughed they both smile, too. Jonas nudges Isak’s side with his elbow a little, happy to get to share this with him; the jokes about the sadness that was once dripping all over the place, like from a leak in the ceiling, but are now so far gone it’s almost impossible to remember what it looked like.

“No,” Isak goes on, then. “It’s great, though, the two of you. I’m happy for you.”

“Thank you,” Jonas says, and Isak nods. Then:

“So what now?” he asks.

Jonas bites his lip, smiling a little to himself as he looks into the park where they’re sitting, and thinks of Mikael and how nice it is to be around him, and how much he still wants to learn about him, and how much they could make each other happy, and:

“Now?” he says, and Isak nods. “Now I guess we just see where it goes.”

**Author's Note:**

> yo! did you like it? what did you think? are you into this version of mikael and also this version of jonas and him?
> 
> i started writing this to be just a mikael and jonas thing and then i was like "wow i love seeing everyone from jonas's pov." like the friendship with isak? evak from an outsider pov? thea? thea for skam s5 is all i'm saying
> 
> anyway please tell me your thoughts in the comments! you know i always love it when you do
> 
> also i may or may not have a few evak au's in the works so get excited for that!


End file.
